Masculinity at risk (original) (raw)

Hegemonic Masculinity and the Gendering of Men in Disaster Management: Implications for Social Work Education

Advances in social work, 2014

Disaster studies have been slow to address gender issues in the management of disasters. Given the neglect of gender in the previous scholarship on disasters, most of the recent writing on the gendering of disasters has understandably focused on women's experiences in relation to risk management, emergency responses, post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. There has been little interrogation of the ways in which hegemonic masculinity and men's privileged positioning in patriarchal gender regimes impact on the various stages of disaster management. In this paper I draw upon my experience in researching men and masculinities in Australia to draw connections between men's privilege, rural masculinities, men's experiences of trauma, men's violence and men's gendered experience of disasters, especially in relation to bush fires. The paper relates insights arising from these studies to men's responses to disasters, their involvement in disaster management an...

Examining Theoretical Approaches to Men and Masculinity in the Context of High-Risk Work: Applications, Benefits and Challenges

In this paper, we argue that it is important to understand how gender can influence men's occupational health and safety (OH&S). In doing so, we examine how a number of theoretical approaches and perspectives (i.e. a gender differences approach, hegemonic masculinity theory, embodiment theory, and intersectional approaches) have been applied to understanding men's OH&S in high risk work contexts. We discuss the conceptual underpinnings of each approach while examining how they have been applied to understanding men's OH&S. We then consider both the benefits and the challenges associated with each approach. We conclude with recommendations for how these approaches and perspectives might best be used within the context of OH&S research and highlight the key questions that each theoretical approach appears to be best suited to address. A gender differences approach may be most beneficial when we wish to understand the factors that lead to similarities and differences between men and women's work experiences. Hegemonic masculinities theory may be best suited to studying how workplace cultures become gendered and can influence power relations in the workplace, and embodiment theory to understand how gender is enacted and experienced at a bodily level and influence men's OH&S practices. Intersectional approaches can shed light on the ways in which race/ethnicity, class, and social inequalities may intersect with gender to influence OH&S.

Distillation of Resilience: Female Masculinity in Form

Distillation of Resilience: Female Masculinity in Form, 2018

This thesis reviews the ways in which female masculinity is defined, organized and ignored in dominant discourse. The objective is to demonstrate that female masculinity can be deemed a valuable category well beyond the borders of the gender binary. In this research, I pay careful attention to the construction of language around gender identities, and the ways in which female masculine identity has been dislodged from the category of trans identity. This research will shed light on the liminal spaces and magical places of identity in which masculine women dwell. The goal of this thesis is to determine and define common threads of resilience found in the lived, embodied experiences of masculine women who participate in the research process. Drawing on standpoint theory and genderqueer theories, these potential filaments of resilience will be examined through Photovoice methodology. Research findings will be organized into a visual art exhibition to further engage and encourage a public conversation about female masculinity as a gender.

Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: introduction

This text introduces the articles in the dossier considering the contributions of stud- ies of gender and masculinities for anthropological theory in the last two decades. Taking into account the scholarship of authors that marked these studies in the mid-1990s, we explore continuities and advances in the field. We show how current debates on gender and masculinity suggest that the main insights developed during this period are still relevant. The methods of anthropology are considered particu- larly suited for the study of masculinities, given their potential to destabilize “con- ventional” categories of analysis. The comparative nature of anthropology is seen as extremely productive in that it enables to challenge universal categories and raises key questions on the social contexts in which these categories are employed. At the same time, such variety of contexts, especially in situations of radical change and/or crisis, brings new questions to the fore for the analysis of masculinities. Among them the question of the analytical fruitfulness of the notion of hegemonic masculinity in situations in which force, rather than consensus, appears to acquire more salience. KEYWORDS: masculinities, gender, crisis, power, agency.

The place and potential of crisis/crises in critical studies on men and masculinities

Global Discourse, 2022

This article derives from considering the interrelations of two sets of long-term international work: that on interdisciplinary crisis studies and that on critical studies on men and masculinities. More specifically, it interrogates the place and potential of crisis and crises in the politics and problematics of men and masculinities, including how crisis can be a driver of critical studies on men and masculinities. Further to this, four main forms of deployment of crisis within critical studies on men and masculinities are interrogated. There is a well-elaborated debate on what has come to be called ‘the crisis of masculinity’. Interestingly, this takes very different shapes, sometimes even opposite constructions, in different parts of the world and within different discourses. Even with this diversity, crisis is often presented as ‘fact’, identity and a result of ‘role confusion’ for boys, young men and men around what it might mean to be a boy and man in contemporary times. This ...

Militarisation, masculinisation and organisational exclusion in the crisis preparedness sector

Journal of Risk Research

This study aims to deepen the understanding of processes that affect collaboration between professions and organisations in the crisis preparedness domain from a gender perspective. A total of twenty-three Swedish duty officers participated in the study. The analysis of the interviews show that collaboration can be understood as (a) the militarisation of civil crisis management actors, which means that many of the work processes and cultures that originate in military organisations can now be found in the security and crisis management sector; (b) the masculinisation, which means that when male dominance appears to prevail, active strategies are used against women, civilian personnel and also inexperienced colleagues and (c) organisational exclusion which emerges particularly in situations where collaboration between female-dominated and male-dominated organisations are required. The findings are important for crisis preparedness research and practice and should work in favour of evening out asymmetries in collaborative crisis management.